Advertisements presented during videos have increasingly been used as a form of revenue for publishers of the video. In many cases, these advertisements viewed during a video cause a viewer to abandon further viewing of the online video, for example, due to a lack of interest in the advertisement, annoyance of the advertisement, or the like. In video advertisements, however, the revenue of a video publisher of the online video generally depends on the number of video advertisements shown. As such, retention of viewers during these advertisements can be critical as higher retention leads to greater viewer engagement with videos and, consequently, enhanced opportunities to show more advertisements.
Generally, in digital advertising, a common metric for measuring and selecting advertisements is based on a click through rate (CTR), conversion rate, or other pay-per-action pricing policies. Although this measure can be appropriate for search advertisements, such a metric is insufficient for video advertisements for various reasons. For example, with video advertisements, an advertisement objective may be for branding or to be informative without requiring a click or conversion, resulting in a low frequency of clicks and conversions. Further, such conventional pay-per-action pricing policies do not take into account information relating to retention of a viewer to continue viewing a video rather than abandoning the video. Retention power of a video advertisement could affect the continuation of a viewer during the subsequent video advertisements during the same video session. Therefore, the advertisement revenue for video publishers is in many cases based on the effectiveness or the retention power of the advertisement and conventional pay-per-action pricing policies are not effective in describing the retention of a viewer.
Further, pay-per-action pricing policies generally use auction bids to select placement for an advertisement. In this manner, an advertisement associated with a higher auction bid might be allocated to a particular placement or position. Not only do traditional advertisement placement methods forego considerations of the retention power of the advertisement, but also the specific advertisement slot for which an advertisement is being placed. As such, with traditional pricing policies, an advertisement with a high auction bid but low viewer retention might be selected for a first advertisement slot resulting in a viewer to immediately discontinue viewing the video including the subsequent video advertisements.